Magic Dry Top Fuel dragster once again carries driver Scott Palmer to a successful day
DINWIDDIE, VA – Scott Palmer raced to his fourth straight opening-round victory Sunday at the second annual 
Virginia NHRA Nationals and nearly upset the reigning world champion in the quarterfinals before bowing out by .03 seconds. Still, the native Missourian was all smiles as he peeled off his sweat-drenched firesuit.
“We are loving this hot weather,” said Palmer, who officially finished fifth on the day. “This was by far the hottest conditions we’ve faced all year and just look at how the field evened out. I welcome these summer races with open arms.”
Palmer’s biggest achievement of the day was a first-round triumph over Top Fuel stalwart Doug Kalitta, who had qualified more than a tenth of a second quicker during time trials, slotting fifth to Palmer’s 12th-place perch. But none of that mattered when the lights flashed as Palmer peeled off his quickest pass of the weekend, a 3.869 at 322.58 mph, to eliminate Kalitta’s tire-smoking 5.568-second, 119.26-mph effort.
“Qualifying wasn’t the best for us because we missed the set-up in the one good session Friday night when everyone else went fast,” Palmer said. “That’s why there was such a gap between Doug and me on the timing sheets. But no matter what, that’s a top car over there, one of the best in the world, and Doug is arguably one of the best drivers to ever run this class so we had a real challenge there.
“With the sun on the track, I think the track temp was like 130 in Round 1, and as humid as it was, I knew we’d need to be on our game and the guys delivered. I figured we wouldn’t get much of anything on the tree because Doug’s the most consistently-quick leavers in history, so we pushed it as far as we thought we could and ended up running the fastest pass of the session. It’s quite a thrill to beat that team.”
Up next was Torrence and the CAPCO team, a group that routinely shares tuning data with Palmer’s Magic Dry crew. Not wishing to repeat the mistakes of the last few times when he’s raced his good friend, Palmer was extra dialed-in and came oh-so-close to getting the win light, his 3.910 at 318.69 mph coming up just short to Torrence’s 3.870 at 319.14 mph.
“The last two times we raced Steve we smoked the tires early because we were trying too much,” Palmer said. “This time we wanted to make sure we got the car down the track and we ended up having quite a race. The track surface had crept up to 141 degrees and all the cars that didn’t smoke the tires that round were damn close to smoking the tires so I’m glad ours held the track and made it tough on Steve.
“It sends a message. It lets all the other teams know we can run this car hard and keep them honest. No one can look past us anymore, and it’s been that way for a while. I’m very round of this group and if we keep this up we’ll be in the title chase at the end of the year.”
